In my day, we called it “Helter Skelter”


If you’re looking for a good summary of accelerationism and neo-reactionism, Zack Beauchamp provides it. It’s all about increasing chaos until the whole system breaks down, so the wealthy or ruthless can pick up the pieces. I knew the name of Charles Manson would come up somewhere in there.

Their main inspiration on how exactly to “accelerate” this process came from James Mason, a previously unheralded neo-Nazi writer who produced a newsletter called Siege in the 1980s. In Siege, Mason uses the collapse of George Lincoln Rockwell’s political strategy to claim that any attempt to work inside the parameters of normal politics was doomed to failure. A better approach, he argued, was pioneered by serial killer Charles Manson — a correspondent of Mason’s who deeply influenced the theories developed in Siege.

The murders committed by Manson and his disciples served, in his mind, as a model of decentralized violent action that would be hard for authorities to stop. If neo-Nazis emulated Manson on an individual level, killed and tortured select targets, eventually they could help spur a white uprising against the system — accelerate the pace of a societal collapse already made inevitable by Jewish and non-white corruption, and set the stage for its replacement by a Fourth Reich.

It’s really just crude violence and destruction dressed up in pretentious bullshit by people like Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. People get all worked up about post-modernism, but if you really want to see a spectacular word salad of absurd nonsense, try reading anything by Nick Land. It’s hard to believe, but his pseudo-philosophical babbling actually appeals to some people.

But then, some people think Jordan Peterson has anything worthwhile to say, so there’s no accounting for taste. You’d think they’d reflexively draw the line at a philosophy of world-wide chaos, mass murder, and a restoration of feudalism, though.

Comments

  1. simonhadley says

    People get so wide eyed and frightened by the likes of Charles Manson but something they miss is that he was pretty stupid and extraordinarily delusional. He really thought he could start a race war with misdirection by having some rich white people murdered and making it look like the work of black people. It didn’t work. It didn’t even come close to working.

  2. says

    Sounds like more of that 2nd Civil War BS fantasy the extreme right uses as wank material. They been going on about that for decades. Remember when they elevated Randy Weaver to sainthood? IMO right wing militias who believe this shit are by far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda. Mainly because they live here. Trump is setting us up for another Oklahoma City, and with what he did in Syria, he’s setting us up for another 9/11 too.

    This isn’t some batshit conspiracy theory. We have multiple right wing figures threatening civil war, and the ongoing battle in Syria has released hundreds of convicted terrorists.

    I’m convinced a lot of MAGA-idiots don’t care that Trump is utterly incompetent, they just want the destruction and chaos. It’s similar to Evangelicals praying for the end of the world so they can get their precious Jesus back.

  3. bryanfeir says

    You’d think they’d reflexively draw the line at a philosophy of world-wide chaos, mass murder, and a restoration of feudalism, though.

    You’d think, but a lot of these people seem convinced that they’d naturally be nobility if it weren’t for the Great Conspiracy attempting to push this wrong-headed ‘equality’ nonsense. Far more of them than actually could be supported as nobles, of course.

    What’s the difference between an old Southern plantation and a baron’s demense? Official recognition by the Crown, which the plantations didn’t get. And that, rather than any sort of Enlightenment principles, was what drove the South to support the American Revolution.

  4. Snarki, child of Loki says

    A “white uprising against the system” provoked by violence against them?

    What are they going to do, slaughter white supremacists until they rise up?

    Sure, try it out for the first 90% or so, then we’ll see.

  5. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    only way to break the paradigm is with a machete, donchano.

    only way to think outside the box is to smash the box with full force

    I hate those aphorisms I coined

  6. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    testing syntax:

    next line is repeated dashes

    disappears
    next line is dash-space repeated

    still visible?

  7. microraptor says

    Up until Trump took office, radical right-wing groups were considered the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the country. After Trump took office he ordered the official definition of terrorism changed to exclude them.

  8. voidhawk says

    I think the origins of ‘accelerationism’ as a term come from Marxists. The idea is that instead of trying to reform the political system, we should deliberately make conditions as bad as possible in the current system to accelerate the inevitable proletarian revolution. It only makes sense that the Right would co-opt such an obviously terrible strategy.

  9. mrquotidian says

    I don’t know why you would invoke Manson as a model for decentralized violent action. Manson’s murders mainly fostered deep distrust of youth and hippie culture in the decades that followed. It bolstered reactionaries who wanted to suppress the free-love, drug-using, anti-war, 60s ethos that his group was purported to embody. Similarly, ethno-nationalists committing random acts of violence would deeply tarnish their current status as a semi-legitimate political force. You can go back even further to see where stochastic political violence often backfires for the groups involved, like with the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II, or much early 20th century anarchist violence.

  10. says

    @#2, Ray Ceeya:

    with what he did in Syria, he’s setting us up for another 9/11 too.

    Yeah, it’s incredibly scary, the way the US has been handing out weapons and funding to absolutely anybody who gives lip service to the claim that they will use them to attack Assad. It’s been admitted that we’ve been arming both ISIS and Al Queda through that program, and nobody knows where all the stuff we’ve given out has gone.

    Oh, wait, that was the Obama administration, under the Hillary Clinton State Department.

  11. jrkrideau says

    @ 11 The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs)
    Oh, wait, that was the Obama administration,
    Don’t worry about it, US foreign “policy” never changes, someone simply slaps a new brand name on the container.

  12. vucodlak says

    But remember- we have no hard evidence that Nazis are violent, or that they even desire violence. Unless a Nazi is, right this moment, strangling an untermensch, we cannot assume that that Nazi is violent. If they are, in fact, strangling someone, then we may engage them in a calm and rational debate about whether we might find some common ground on which to reach an agreeable compromise.

    For instance, perhaps they could be persuaded to only half-strangle the person. Or, possibly, they could limit their murderous acts to odd-numbered days. Something reasonable like that, which we could all live with. As a gesture of good will, we could offer them a lovely gold-braided garrote to ease the strain on their hands, so long as they pinky-swear not to use it on us.

    Should rational debate fail, well, they’ll probably be done anyway, and there’s no use crying over spilled milk! And once they aren’t actively engaged in strangling someone, can we really predict that they’ll be violent again? Of course not! I have it on good authority that you’d have to be at least a trio of psychic children floating in a milk bath to do that, and who among us can claim such an honor? Although I suppose we could try a bit of anthropomancy. We do seem to have a sudden abundance of a corpses, for some reason.

  13. aramad says

    @13 “But remember- we have no hard evidence that Nazis are violent, or that they even desire violence.”
    Please point out to me where someone has claimed this, so that I may laugh at them.

    “If they are, in fact, strangling someone, then we may engage them in a calm and rational debate”
    Likewise, please point out to me where anyone has claimed that we should never defend ourselves against actual and present immediate physical attacks (ass opposed to potential future physical attacks), so that I may also laugh at that guy.

  14. vucodlak says

    @ aramad, #14
    For someone who claims they aren’t a defender of Nazis, you’re sure quick to take offense every time I poke the ardent defenders of “civility” (for Nazis).

    Here’s a tip: when someone bangs out a broad parody of a certain type of asshole, without making any obvious reference to you, maybe don’t get all huffy and declare “I don’t sound like that!” if you don’t want people to think you’re one of the assholes in question.

    If that (#13) ain’t you, then it ain’t about you, is it?

  15. aramad says

    @14
    What? I never identified with those positions at all; I clearly asked for instances of people making the statements you seem to have witnessed. If someone actually stated those positions, my gob would assuredly be smacked.